October Tears
by Alex the Anachronistic
Summary: Luna Lovegood's visiting the gravesite of the husband she lost twenty years ago. Guess who it was? I'll give you three chances to come up with his name. Really. I mean it.


DISCLAIMER: I am making no money off of this, and this site isn't either. This is purely fan-fiction written by a weird person who has absolutely nothing better to do than write this stuff. I don't own Harry Potter, Hogwarts, etc. J.K.R. does.

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October Tears

The wind was nippy on that cool October evening. The sun was receding into the horizon, barely visible beyond the shadowy dark silhouettes of figures that were trees outlined against it. The leaves swirled round in tiny teasing whirlwinds, catching onto the skirt of the woman standing, vacant-eyed, beside the gravestone.

The gravestone was in the far corner of the cemetery, pretty much all on its lonesome. The other clusters of stones, grouped together in dead little families and relations, were not privy to the august presence of this prestigious corpse in their final resting place.

The woman who now bent over the mossy cool stone, tracing its engraved caption over and over with her finger, was old. Her once dark-blonde hair had turned, over time, a creamy white. She kept it long, however, and it trailed down to her waist in beautiful ringlets, combed to perfection by her caring daughter's steady hands. Her face was wrinkled with age, and saddened with tragedy. Even though she wasn't all that tall in her youth, her frame had settled so that she was even more diminutive now, about five-one or so. Despite the fact, though, that this woman had been a slave to the test of time, she nevertheless had aged delicately and gracefully, retaining still some of her more youthful qualities. Her eyes, for example, remained blue, blissful, and dreamy, while yet serene and tranquil, and were perfectly oblivious to everyone and everything. Also, her mind was as supple and imaginative as ever; that's possibly why her poetry sold so well even in her advancing days. And even yet, after all these years, a telltale necklace of bottle-caps hung round her lithe neck, a pair of unique radish earrings dangled from her soft lobes, and her wand was tucked cockily behind her ear. This, indeed, was the woman who, as a girl, was known to the world as Luna Lovegood, here at the gravesite.

Her eyes watered as she stood there, hunched over in what should have been a rather uncomfortable position for her constant back problems. However, she either was immune to them or they ceased to exist here, in this place so reverend to her…her husband's gravesite.

She said nothing. It would have been against her nature to say anything out loud. The dead DID physically have ears, even if they no longer functioned. Instead, she drew out her grubby handkerchief and dabbed her eyes with it. Even though Luna had matured into an extraordinarily beautiful woman, she never had been cured of her rather childish habits. She had always been a bit…different.

Perhaps it was the fact that she was different, however, that had made her so compatible with her late husband, dead twenty years ago now. When he was on this earth, not buried beneath it, he had always been the one to comfort her, to let her know that she was special. And under his guidance, encouragement, and counseling, she had blossomed into a success story. Her poetry had sold off the charts, to steal the Muggle phrase, and whenever a new installment came out, it always headed the best-sellers list long-term. Luna, although forced into the rather unnerving marriage by a new marriage-law-thingermabob with a man she didn't know all that well, she and he had grown to actually really love each other. It was not passionate, but it was gentle, sweet, and they really had grown to care about each other.

People said that they looked nothing like each other, and acted nothing like each other, and so said that neither was suitable for the other. Therefore, perceptive Luna, who was very conscious of the way people thought of her, despite that she hid the fact away very closely, came to feel that way about her fiancé before they married. Once they were married, she actually fought with him considerably often. She hated her husband, and her husband hated her. They were not, in the least, intimate in any way, and every day was stressful for her. The only way she managed to make it through every day was because of the constant presence of her father, whom she cherished dearly, more than anyone. You see, Luna and her husband lived with Mr. Lovegood, because the aging man couldn't bear the thought of living alone. He always was trying to promote friendship between the unsatisfied couple, assuring them both that they were perfectly matched, and had a lot more in common than they let on. And Luna saw that, now, he had been very right. He should have known; after all, he knew both Luna and her husband very well. (Her husband actually worked as co-editor of the Quibbler, secretly except to Mr. Lovegood, for twenty years. Therefore, he and Mr. Lovegood were rather good friends after all that time of working together.) Anyhow, so Luna despised her husband, and her husband despised her, and Luna was constantly on the verge of going unstable, simply restrained by the fact that her father was there to protect her.

That is, until, the day the poor man died.

This was three years after being married to the man she loathed, six years out of Hogwarts. She had made breakfast for her husband and her father. She made sure to burn one piece of toast to almost no recognition (She always did that for her husband's toast, "to represent your black heart" she told him.) She placed the burnt toast and the perfect toast on the table, and turned back to dish out a plate of scrambled eggs. When she turned back around, she saw her father quickly downing the crisp, rye-flavored chards. Luna had exclaimed something, startling her father. He began to choke. Luna slapped him on the back, forced water down his throat, and even did a clumsy version of the Heimlich maneuver. However, it was to no avail; her father's face turned purple, then he stopped coughing and turned ashen gray.

Luna saw she had no choice; she called for her husband frantically. Soon the man strode in, face half-shaved, a razor in his left hand, looking very scary and irate indeed. Luna quickly explained in a few words, and Luna's husband was soon trying his best to do resuscitation and pump some life back into the old man. He didn't manage to do so.

They sent for the mediwitch, but, by then, they knew it would be no good. The mediwitch took one look at Mr. Lovegood, listened to his nonexistent heartbeat for a minute, then quietly pronounced the man to be beyond all reach of help.

Something in Luna then snapped. Here she was, trapped forever with this horrid man she despised more than hell itself, and with no one to comfort her in her distress. She realized all too clearly that her father was never coming back, and that her life would be even more miserable now than it had been before. On top of that, she was the one basically responsible for killing him; if she had made both pieces of toast perfectly browned, and had not bothered her father while he was eating, he never would have died. And the thought that it was all her fault, she knew, she could not endure.

While her husband discussed in his brusque, domineering fashion with the mediwitch, trying to discern what the cause of death was, etc., Luna innocently went up to her room 'to rest from the shock'. But instead of turning to her bed and closing her eyes to sleep, she tiptoed into her husband's potions cabinet, removed a great quantity of belladonna, and replaced the jar. He would not care if he was depraved of his wife as well as his father-in-law today. She and her father could have the same funeral and rest, side by side, for eternity.

She did not hurry her actions as she calmly filled a glass with water and mixed the belladonna with it. If she was going to die, she was going to die in a pleasant, unhurried manner. So of course, she went downstairs again to get some sugar to mix with her water and poison. 'Pleasant' did not include the bitter taste of belladonna.

As though she were in a dream, she went down the stairs, into the kitchen. The mediwitch and her husband were inspecting the corpse of her father, right there on the kitchen table. It was most unseemingly, but, since she was going to be dead herself in a few minutes anyways, she didn't much care. Carefully, she extracted about half a cup of sugar from her canister that she kept by the stove, and, in a few minutes, she left the kitchen, ambling meekly. As she ascended the stairs, she heard her husband say, "I think I see what he choked on…perhaps I can reach it with my tongs…" Luna merely buried her face in her free hand to hide the oncoming grief.

It took her a moment to get over her spasm of silent tears as she walked to her room. Finally, she reached it, and went in, sinking down on the bed to relax just a moment before she took the plunge.

Luna poured about half of the sugar she brought with her into the cup of water and poison. Slowly, she swirled it in a gentle motion with her hand. Finally, the poison and the sugar in the water seemed to have thoroughly mixed, and Luna was satisfied. In a tranquil, resigned movement, she raised the glass and took a sip. She instantly shuddered. Ugh. She had added far too much sugar. Now she was going to have to down this quickly.

She raised the glass again, preparing to swallow it all in one swift gulp. Suddenly, the door burst open, and her husband burst in. He angrily seized the glass, and threw it down to the ground. The glass smashed into a thousand pieces, and the poison potion splattered everywhere.

Luna stared at him quizzically. At least, she did for a moment. Then, however, she began to cry, sobbing like a little girl, sobbing like she never had in front of her husband before. And at first, her husband simply stood there, watching her. Then, however, he sat down beside her on the bed, and, gently, put his arms around her. He said nothing, just drew her close to him. And Luna cried on his shoulder.

It was a tragic way to set off on their good relationship. However, if it was tragedy that brought them together, it was only tragedy that took them apart. After the death of her father, Luna learned to trust, then, eventually, love her husband, and he the same to her. Soon enough, they had two children; Maybelle and Maximus. They even became the most envied couple of their time, after ten years or so. Of course, though, sadly, Luna's husband died after a time. Their happiness together could not last forever, after all.

Back in the graveyard, Luna sniffed as she repeatedly traced the name, over and over, on the gravestone. She looked up, her tears merging into the October sky, which was still blue, but turning gold and orange with the sun's setting, and opened her purse with a snap. From within the black pocketbook, she drew a canister of hot Chinese green tea and two blackberry scones. Green tea and blackberry scones had been her husband's favorites. The tea she poured into a little teacup she had set into the cement long ago, and the scones she placed right beside it. Luna bent down to the name on the gravestone and kissed it gently. "I love you, dearest," she said, and rose to go. "Oh, and by the way," she added, as she walked down the path to the gate of the mortuary, "I'll be back next week, as usual." With that, she tore her gaze away from the gravestone, and walked quickly as she could, at her age, away.

For your information, the name on the gravestone read this: Severus Snape.


End file.
